Caernarvon

Caernarvon, painted in 1875 and in the Birmingham Museums Trust, documents the Welsh town dominated by Edward I's great medieval castle, one of the most impressive surviving examples of late thirteenth-century military architecture in Europe. Brett's interest in Caernarfon was likely both geological — the surrounding Snowdonian geology is ancient and complex — and topographic, the castle's massive walls and towers providing an unusual opportunity to apply his observational method to man-made structure. The 1870s were a decade of significant tourist interest in Wales, promoted by the expanding railway network, and Caernarfon was a standard destination on the North Wales tour. Brett's treatment is characteristically more interested in the light, the water of the Menai Strait, and the stone's geological character than in historical or picturesque associations.

The castle's massive polygonal towers and long walls provide geometric forms that Brett renders with architectural accuracy rather than picturesque softening. The surrounding water of the Menai Strait gives him the marine element that appears in most of his mature works. Welsh slate-grey stone has a different chromatic character from the red sandstone or limestone of English castles.